1995-09-22-Facet of Social Fragrance

Session

Opening

Daniel(TR #2): "Happy are we to hear your elation, you enlightened spirit, your jubilant attitude and happy are we to share this atmosphere with you this evening. I am Daniel and also here is Tomas. Also here is your support system and cheering section.

We reflect with affection on your responses and your verbal sharing following up on the Northwest Teaching Mission conference just held. Our chortle is that our lessons on social fragrance have fallen on very fertile soil for your soulful and heartfelt impressions, your laughter, your acceptance, and your twirling in this dance of community has set all our souls on fire with shared enthusiasm. Those of you who follow Michael in the sense that He intended to create the swirling ascendent eddy which is helping to pull up the depressed state of affairs on Urantia. The spiritual awakening is becoming more and more apparent to Christendom and Christianity alike. Your work in the forefront in your abject devotion, your growing confidence of greater morontia realities possible here and now have contributed mightily to the Correcting Time. We are thankful to you, dear coworkers.

Lesson

Respect, Humility

We now return our focus to our formal lesson plan. Although it is certainly not cast in stone we are mindful of a certain continuity which exists which is part of your evolutionary development. These lessons have been overseen and approved, so I offer as a subject this evening a facet, again, of social fragrance, yet having some rather personal and meaningful substance, that being the matter of individual respect. I preface this as individual respect rather than self respect for individual respect also incorporates the respect of others. As any well balanced exchange the value is equally shared in yourself as well as in your counterpart.

Respect stems from your respect for your First Source and Center, your Thought Adjuster, your relationship thereto and spreads from there. Without respect for the authority of Deity there can be no true self respect in the individual. When you ponder your own reality consider that you have given yourself to the care of your Creator. Your humility in acknowledging the greatness of the First Source and Center allows you the comfort of humility, the joy of acknowledging that you are not the ultimate administrator of the universe. This perspective affording you your own sense of smallness now is the seed which will grow into your comprehension of your actual and potential greatness. It is common practice for individuals to admire the accomplishments of others and to revere the unknown, but respect is truly rare in the deeper sense for so few individuals truly acknowledge their own deepest reality.

As you know, self respect is a gift from Michael. But what does that mean? Is it a word which you acknowledge and say thank you and have no knowledge what this gift can be to you?

The correlated elements of self respect and ego are confusing and ill defined but distinctly different. Self respect, when considered for yourself and for each other individual you encounter, relates back to that aspect of reality which you bow before, which you worship and whose authority you honor. Abraham has spoken of the soldier who follows instructions from his/her leader and in this you soldiers of the circles honor the authority of your relationship to Michael. His instructions to you are uniquely yours. Your perception of His instructions to you are uniquely yours. This is true for each individual, of course.

Thus when you emerge from your stillness, from your sanctified bastion of strength and enter the arena to face your protagonists in the business of living this life on this planet, respect that in your encounters, which are also respected by our Father, that view is eliminative of much that is congesting of the Spirit, that is superficial, that is illusory.

In respecting that which has eternal value you are addressing potential. You are inviting potential to become actual. You have whet the appetite of the Indwelling Adjuster. You may not have coincidentally frightened the human ego including your own but you have none the less activated that Spark of Divinity which seeks fulfillment and greater growth. Much of your lives have been consumed by unreality or relative reality based upon your recognition of your purpose or need to have purpose. Now your purpose is coming into fruition and you are beginning to not only take delight in who you are becoming but you are beginning to truly respect what you are becoming and what is becoming of those around you, those who support that in you which they also respect. This nurturance of respect has substance and from this substance of character all delight takes on the aspect of praise, thanksgiving, and also worship. There are many, many too numerous to mention here, side effects of having a cognizant understanding of respect and in particular self respect for it then enters into realms of spirit in which the Conjoint Actor plays a significant part.

I would now share this platform with Tomas who is eager to also contribute to this lesson on respect. Tomas.."

Personality

Tomas(TR #3): "This is your teacher, Tomas. Greetings to you all. I am happy to share this teaching platform with my brother Daniel and to augment and elaborate some additional thoughts which hopefully will blend as one fabric of truth.

The gift of personality from the First Source and Center is a great basis for individual respect as there is no other personality in all of creation, in all the vast universes of time and space, that can replace or duplicate any individual's personality configuration. The uniqueness of the Father's work is astounding on many levels when considered on the physical plane but perhaps there is no higher level of wonder than to behold the manifold diverse beauty of an individual child of our God.

Even Thought Adjusters deign to honor this gift of the selfsame Universal Father by patiently awaiting their completion in personal expression, each uniquely given to each of us. Consider this amazing thing, that the God of all, the I AM desires to experience personality of His own making and sends this individual spark and fragment to seize the totality of personal experience from you and me. As Daniel has said, respect is based on the full development of potential, and each of us has the potential of a Paradise Finaliter, a destiny which even the highest created beings cannot fully predict or comprehend.

Because you yet remain in mortal limitations, your conscious history can only be that of the time that has elapsed since your conception and birth. Thus it is easy to fall prey to the limits of smallness inherent in mortality and to therefor ascribe very limited value to your personhood. But, as you know, you have just begun this incredible experience of sharing sonship and daughtership with each other and your future, our future, is so great that it can not be comprehended by the most advanced mortal, not even by morontial beings of my current experience status. (pause) Isaac is struggling to convey the meaning of the visual images he sees. Please bear with him. One moment. (pause) Respect for individuals, yourselves included, therefor requires the larger perspective that is beyond your mortal grasp at this time to even approximate its true reality.

I am aware that there has been discussion among many readers of the Urantia Book that the status of mortality appears to be diminished and denigrated by some of the writers or at least this interpretation has been put forth by some readers. Keep in mind, my friends, that while we have started at the bottom of the experiential levels, our destinies are the envy of other created beings for we encompass the entire breadth and depth of creature finite experience.

And so when you consider your lives to this point you may be tempted to evaluate your worth in terms of your performance. This is a natural human propensity. It has been a chief function of our mission to change your perspective from that which you have inherited by culture and to see yourselves and others in a totally larger, grander and truer dimension.

I will conclude my remarks with a statement that has been made frequently but always bears repeating. Because you are starting at the beginning of creature experience do not fail to fully engage in it. Do not set your mind in the future to the detriment of the present while I suggest you not limit your appraisal of all things to your past. Enjoy your mortality, in other words. Be glad you are human. It is a unique, one time only, experience! Live it to the fullest.

Thank you for your gracious ears. I remain your friend, brother, and teacher, Tomas. And now, Daniel, I will return the platform to you."

Daniel: Thank you, my brother. And thank you for your skillful cross stitch.

Be alert to the respect that you pay your teachers that when we speak you bear with us. You wait those long pauses and allow those moments to pass without despair that we shall not return. In like manner it is our hope that you will respect your fellow human beings, that in the course of time you will neither rush people through their appointed personality expression, nor your own. The hungry soul is responsive to spiritual food, to your experience, strength, and hope, is responsive to your expression of your God Fragment. Honor yourself and your fellows by favoring that reality and do this in awareness of the Element in each that is deserving of respect for Its own sake.

We embrace you and invite you to converse, express, explore, enquire and ask questions. The floor is open."

Dialogue

Kent: "Greetings, my friends. You have given us lessons in social fragrance, appreciation, respect, and many others. My appreciation I have expressed in our social time, in our share time, for all those that were with me and helped me in our recent conference. I would like to express my appreciation and my love for you and all that were involved behind the scenes. Without you we would have no social fragrance and it was very evident at our gathering in Boise. It was beautiful and appreciated by everybody."

Daniel: "Dear brother, you are, of course, welcome for our assistance, cooperation, and attendance. But as Tomas has indicated do not denigrate your own efforts and your gift of personality. For although we are luring you into greater acceptance of your personhood in your morontial realm of reality expression, your inherent gift of personality has not been idle or without guidance. Your contributions to our work are part of our team. You are fond of acronyms and we have created some. But your TeaM [Teaching Mission acronym] goes a long way in expressing that we are, indeed, a team and you are a vital member. So, of course, we thank you also."

Tomas: "Of course my brother I speak for myself and our part of this team when I say that it was our great pleasure to participate in this conference, to observe the bonding, the truly ascending level of human fellowship which is developing in the Teaching Mission. We are also, as you know, learning from our experiences with you all. We are learning what great progress can be made by people who in responding to this spiritual pressure are allowing themselves to grow and experiencing opportunities which are truly, truly unique. And so is this paradox the case: this planet with all its handicaps provides the most advantageous environment to spiritual growth that we have observed in our lifetimes. This plane and the others. This is a new thing, this correction experience and I, Tomas, am amazed to see what progress you are all making, not just you individuals present in this group tonight but throughout this time. Our hats are off to you."

Correcting Time

Daniel: "Each time you take off your socks or your shirt and turn them right side out remember Correcting Time, for this inside out process is very similar. Not long ago despair and discouragement were the predominant atmosphere. Only were there occasional white lights on a black background. Within a very short period of time the salt and pepper, black and white is turning. In your lifetime it is possible that we will have turned it completely inside out, that the inside, the Indwelling Adjuster will outwardly manifest to the extent that your realm will appear to be a white background with occasional dark spots."

Ken: "You raise many thoughts in my mind as you speak, as you all speak. Thank you for being with me today. Thank you all for being with me always. Your lesson, your words I respect this evening. As I reflect back to last weekend the thirty four personalities that were there in the mortal realm, and their personalities, to see how they have grown in the year since we saw them last. One stands in awe and respects the growth. The term that I used was a showcase. And, indeed, it was a showcase of your teachings to us that we can not only participate in daily but we can get together at gatherings and compound our love upon itself many fold. Thank you my friends."

Daniel: "And you."

Tomas: "This is Tomas. I would add one more comment. You see, your culture, your world is invested in fault finding, is impressed with violence, is looking for greater errors to occur in others so that by comparison individuals won't feel quite as bad. That is the black background. That is the consequence of the Lucifer Rebellion and to some extent the shortage due to the Adamic default.

But that picture, while it appears black, is a false picture; for it only looks at those things which are clearly negative. You come here partly to hear the good news which you won't read about often in your papers or hear about often on your televisions. We tell you the truth, my friends, we do not lie to you. Good news is greater than bad news. The reality, the respect for each individual is far greater than the disrespect which has been the focus of your culture. That's all."

Leetah: "Good evening. I am not sure it is synchronicity or not, but today in my class meeting the thing that we were dealing with was keeping our word and keeping our agreements so that we had self respect and self love, so that we could let love into our lives, so that we could have a happy, peaceful school. As I look at that sequence it seems to me that the commitment, the agreement that the First Source and Center has made with each of us, with the Indwelling Spirit, (and I am just kind of thinking out loud) is our responsibility to keep our word in responding to that Guide so that we can have self respect, self love, so that we can let the world and God love us, so that we present that peaceful, happy person to the world. That just kind of flowed out..I am not sure..!"

Busyness

Daniel: "Another aspect of Urantia life has been this terrible hurry to cover the fear. This is not a condemnation of the conditioning which all mortals have known, certainly in your culture. When you take time to savor your moment, your mortal existence, the gifts of today, you also have time to stop and respect your brothers and sisters in their life. You may be instrumental in allowing them to stop for a moment and savor their own peace. Give them a glimpse of their own worth and their own value. In time, hopefully a short time, the tremendous pace of your cultures will slow down sufficiently that your expressions will be more gracious and more serving of one another. It is very difficult to walk in grace when one is stumbling.

I am not saying that all things must come to a standstill or that there is no value in robust physical activity, indeed, there are some rather titillating dances. But in making real contact with your peers, your charges, your associates, allow time to envelope you and highlight the moments. Whether much is said or not stand in harmonious appreciation and mutual respect of the encounter. Eventually people will begin to recognize the presence of God within each other. I have finished."

Leetah: "Thank you, Daniel."

Tomas: "Tomas here. Because you, Leetah, are engaged in teaching development of character to your charges, those children in your care, your discussions of responsibility and truthfulness which you have described as keeping agreements, keeping one's word, has great value.

First of all these are essential characteristics of mortal character, and not just mortal character but true eternal character. Second, because these little ones grow up in a world which announces in many ways that the dependability of other people is questionable, at best, that the promises made to them by those they trusted can be and often are broken, they look to you as a person with great influence. So to hear words of comfort and challenge is a great service.

Because Lucifer and the others taught that God was a lie, that Christ Michael was a liar, that the whole system was a sham, that it was not true, so did this great tragic lie foist itself upon ensuing generations. Its effects, you see, are still here. But, as we have said, we are all in this together to bring about change. My commendation to you on your good work."

Leetah: "Thank you Tomas."

PamElla: "Greetings teachers. I have, I guess, sort of a devil's advocate comment. I haven't had one of those for a while. I am thinking about the busyness of our culture. Everybody I talk to seems to think things are getting busier and busier. It is hard to remember the days when people had time to sit on the porch and rock and talk with one another. And I certainly think that part of it is the change in our economic situation and with women entering the labor market but still as many chores to be done. Now parts of the couple are trying to pick up those chores. That is a lot of the reason for the additional stress that we experience.

As a small group here I am thinking about the amount of time we have dedicated to this mission as creating additional stresses and time pressures that we didn't have before, when we count the hours. So I definitely am a devil's advocate because I do so appreciate the lessons on balance and the lessons on slowing down. I clearly did hear you, Daniel, as saying that a lot of that slowing down is in our beingness when we are being with people to get in touch with God and shine that out. In that there is slowing down. And you have given us lessons on ranking of priorities. I feel like I am stripped down to the basics now. There is nothing left to get rid of other than Teaching Mission aspects which I like to do! So I know that my comments are kind of convoluted here. I don't know if you want to address them or not. But if you have words of wisdom and solace, I would appreciate them."

Daniel: "My dear friend and precious child, you are, indeed, in a mood and I would not take it too seriously that you might be siding with the devil here. But I do hear your outpouring and will spend a moment rocking on the front porch with you, for in this high tech world outside the walls of these gatherings many are quite caught up. And if we were not of a mind, in a mood to stop with good justification and spend time on our own spiritual development, then we would be completely whisked into a world of fast paced unreality and would be again lost.

The pace of today has disallowed much of the grace of yesteryears but has taken away much of the labor and drudgery of times past also. In your evolutionary steps forward this fervor pitch will calm down in the general sense. You will be afforded more time in which to savor graciousness, good health, good productivity, good creativity, good relationships and good worship without worrying about your priorities. They will all unfold as part of the dance. Today there is insidious stress. We know you find comfort in your teachers, in both a personal study and in a group/social setting.

Perhaps you would like me to comment on how lengthy our teaching sessions have gotten over the course of time? I will take this opportunity to say that the lessons themselves have great merit for they are to some extent encapsulated topics that you can use as reminders or brochures to your friends of what the teachers are about. But the further extended period of somewhat leisurely pondered question and answer, thinking out loud, expressing a mood or a reaction is the real arena wherein the growth actualizes. So we are reluctant to cut short that which benefits you the greatest. Also in time as you begin to teach what you have learned, as you cultivate those social situations which foster the same values as you hold dear and we perpetuate the imbalance will feel less and the need for re-establishing priorities will dissipate. I have many words I could say but I will cease my rambling and hold you in my arms, daughter and beg your compassion for those who yearn for yet more and greater than even we can take to generate."

PamElla: "Daniel, thank you. I don't want these sessions shortened. I was not implying that. It is sort of the whole overall. I think part of it is still being in that practicing stage where we have so many lessons and I have so many lessons in the back of my mind that I am constantly chewing on them to bring into play in different situations or just forgetting about them. There is sort of a pressure there to be learning and growing into a whole new area of experience. So I don't think it is just about time. A lot of the time stuff is choices I make like sending E mail messages. I have been reducing my responsibilities. I am not participating in TR practice or doing that transcript. But it still seems like there are things every week that are there. Then, in addition, there is all this weight of the lessons. I mean, the lessons are wonderful and they are uplifting, but at the same time they are a responsibility to learn them and apply the knowledge and not just allow this time with you to go in one ear and out the other, and out we go, like some people in church who put in their time, listen to the sermons, do their religious thing in the religious context, and when they are outside of the religious context they let it go. I think that this is part of it. I think that I am learning new skills and when they become automatic it will become easier."

(pause)

Daniel: "I am fully expecting Tomas to say something."

Audience: "So is everybody else." (laughter)

Tomas: "Isaac is resisting me for he is thinking of the length of the transcript, (Group comments and laughter) and at times he grows weary of that task which he has fully taken upon himself to do. I only remind you of something which you already know which is this.

The weight of learning all these great lessons which you allude to, that you have heard from us and others, and the other tasks which you have set yourself to do, if grouped into one huge mountain becomes an enormous and intimidating project. My advice, which you already know, is to invest some energy into breaking up that mountain into..no, let me change the analogy..in ascending that mountain step by step. Take that task and take that lesson and simplify or break it down to something that is manageable. Otherwise one can become frozen, paralyzed, overwhelmed with the enormity of the project. And that, of course, is also why your comments regarding balance are entirely correct.

If at all possible when you rest, rest! When you work, work! When you play, play! Don't collapse the borders between these activities too much or there is no sense of distinction and that overwhelming feeling can persist. I think Isaac has put into words fairly well what I am trying to say. Is that helpful?"

Daniel: "Also remember that much of your growth is unconscious. All your real growth takes place through no power of your own except being willing. You will assimilate that which you are able to assimilate as you are able. You are not superwoman. All of these words which pour forth are not for your gestation all at once. But they filter out and through and certain seeds are planted. Do not feel that you need to be more than is necessary to simply be you. Enjoy being you and trust that you will grow by osmosis for your spirit is willing. Enjoy your associations with the teachers and your material and mortal friends and associates to the extent that you find them valuable to your perceived dietary needs in terms of physical, emotional, intellectual, spiritual and morontial. Only you can make that determination. Your peers will respect your assessment of your capacities. Have we helped?"

PamElla: "Yes. Thank you both."

Closing

Daniel: "In view of all of the above it is deemed advisable that we curtail our lesson about now. If there is one yearning to be put forth we will allow that extra moment in time and eternity for your and our satisfaction. Any other questions? (pause)

It is, then, with a great deal of gratitude and a certain amount of sadness that we draw the evening to a close. As you are aware we are with you still observing, monitoring, guiding, encouraging, assisting, and, yes, respecting you and your efforts, even your errors as they incline to invest you with an even greater understanding of your true identity and reality. Go this week in appreciation of one another and in respect for one another's lives, but most importantly respect your own budding morontial soul, the material and spiritual, the human and divine, the unified personality, the balanced human being who walks upon Urantia. Good evening."