1998-10-25-Share Essential Truth

Session

Opening

Machiventa (Jonathan TR): Greetings to you, fellow missioners, this is Machiventa. I am happy to be among you, and, as one who has been here in form like yours before, I can truly sympathize with your zeal, with your enthusiasm, and hope intently that you continue to foster this energy that you are sharing with each other.

Lesson

Teaching, Sharing

You have read of my dealings with your ancestors and how successful these soldiers of faith were in spreading the core of my teachings around the known world. I assure you today that your choice of presentation of your subject matter is freely yours to decide upon. I would only place upon you one obligation which I place upon those others at that time. That is to build everything upon the foundation of the fact of the Fatherhood of God and to establish with surety in whatever you say that the relationships of brotherhood implied through this fact are for all to have, for all to experience deeply. Picture, if you will, that any subject that you address, any theatrics that you execute, are all at the wide opening of a funnel. The narrow opening is my only request of you, that everything feed back to the essential truth. Upon this eternal relationship we are building a great universe civilization, in reality a spiritual family. Since the family of the Father is enormous, beyond the comprehensive ability of the mind of man to grasp, great latitude is granted in what you choose to share with others in promoting the conscious realization of this spiritual family among your brethren, for of great importance is the promotion of this awareness.

I am certain, from my understanding of you, that your motives are not for self-recognition, that you have no drive to prove to yourself your worth as a spiritual teacher. But I do sense a searching for what you may say, what you may present, and I simply assure you today that there is great latitude.

The kingdom of heaven can be thought of as like a large library, this library being the library of truth. You may freely pull one book from any shelf, absorb, and present this to another. But for another to continue their process of growth and enlargement of spiritual awareness, it is important that they come to understanding that they are sitting, that they are existing within this universe library. That realization will grant the freedom for them to explore numerous vast areas of truth. So, I express today: pick your favorite book, for you will do best at sharing this while you undertake the process of enlarging the minds of another and heightening their appreciation of the magnanimity of truth and its availability to the sincere soul.

Thank you for hearing me today.

Mark: You have witnessed our enthusiasm, and you will witness our actions. We desire to be as effective as possible and to work with you to bring about our ideas into fruits of ideals.

Machiventa: Your expression is greatly appreciated. As has been expressed to you years past, you are our hands. The ideals of Michael presented through ideas of the Teaching Mission will only prove worthwhile through the action of yourself and your fellows who follow our curriculum, who understand it and become, yourselves, teachers. You will be assisted, for we have invested much time to date and have no intention of casting away the opportunity to further the Correcting Time.

Mark: You say we are the hands. It may not be given that the hands should know all that the brain has in store, but we know that the hands can have a practiced memory. We have been engaged in this repetitive process of practicing the lessons, and the hands are becoming acquainted with some of the material. Now we seek to go out and play together, only desiring that the hands fully express the desires and ideals behind them.

Machiventa: I could continue with this metaphor, as it is intriguing. I would add a few comments, that you have been manicured. You are learning to pull the slivers from your fingers when you receive them, to restore your own health and sanity. Your muscle memory is good. The circuits are stronger than they have ever been, making our connection with you more resolved. As you spend some time in the days ahead considering subject matter, remember you are hands; you may use a hammer, a guitar, or a fork, whichever you choose to accomplish the task, ever keeping in mind that the work is the work for Michael.

Mark: Thank you for your inspiring words. You have our commitment as does Michael in this effort. May we work together.

Machiventa: I am greatly pleased that Michael has given me his commitment. That was a joke! But I do warmly receive your dedication, and I know that Michael likewise receives this dedication. Beware, such dedication will be put to task.

Stillness

Tom: You made mention in an earlier transcript of the interconnectedness between finding one's center and effective meditation. Could you speak a little more on that issue?

Machiventa: I would first address this topic by making a few definitions of sorts. Effective meditation is the process which you undertake that allows the mind to focus, to become undistracted by surroundings and daily thoughts, and to penetrate to the values, motives, and ideals of your heart, your personality longings. The spiritual centering goes beyond your mind to the Father's presence. This is the ultimate aim of any meditation, that spiritual embrace. Like my earlier statement using a funnel, meditation conforms to the same principle. The techniques of meditation are many, and they all focus to that single experience of communion with God. It is often taught that the silence of the mind is the goal of meditation. This is not the complete and final goal; it is the end goal of mind meditation. Spiritual communion may be attained whether or not there is mental activity. If, for instance, you are not inclined to silence of mind, then directed thinking will better bring you into that fellowship than struggle with a technique more fitting to another personality with a differing mental endowment.

Have you more comments?

Tom: Only to thank you very much.

Elyon (Mark): My friends, I come among you today; this is your friend Elyon. I simply desire to express some characteristics I have noted just in this last week. It is indeed thrilling and exciting for myself to witness the growth involved in the group. It is inspiring to see the sharing of meaningful factors, the stringing together of previous lessons, the inspiring budding of potential rising to the surface in your discussion of service projects. These are the fruits of your labors. These stirrings within your souls represent undeniable growth on your parts. You have heard that true maturity is impossible to fake and undeniable to those who witness it. This is the case, my friends. You have risen to the challenge of moving forward, have accepted the responsibilities within, and have chosen in full knowledge, with consciousness, to be about the direction you perceive to be the right one. This pattern will serve you for the rest of your ascension career, a cycle of internalizing learning and growing followed by a response of desired outreach and service to those around you which results in more learning and growing and outreach and learning and growing. You are just beginning to see this pattern unfold in this life, but I tell you, you will become intimately familiar with its stages of effort and rest and reward, of work and of satisfaction.

So, I say to your plans and your directions, yes, yes. Let us be about them together, and I have every faith and trust that however you decide to manifest these realities will bear great fruit in the service of our Father.

This is all I have to say to you today, as I feel no need to deliver any more lesson. There has been quite enough to examine given here today. You are realizing that much of class these days is taking the form of lab or, more accurately, field class. Much of where your desires are focusing you will be outside this classroom as we study the results of our efforts in the field. We will always maintain this huddle as a means of support and direction, guidance, but we will now branch out and experience our field trips with the same enthusiasm and purpose we feel sitting in our private setting. I will take my leave unless desired to be engaged for some other purpose.

Ego, Personality

Jonathan: In our field study a year ago we discussed personality and ego. You had said personality decides, and how we put that decision into action is ego. Could you clarify: Is the ego a faculty of personality that projects the decision in manifold ways, or is the projection itself ego? When the personality does something, the very outworking of it is the reality of the ego, or is there an intervening step? When the personality does something, the ego is the actor, and the action is distinct from ego?

Elyon: The way to visualize the relationship of the ego in the example you presented is that the action will come through the projection of the ego; it will be colored by the ego; it will be sized and directed by the ego. The ego will be the aperture in this example. It will be the lens through which the ideal is projected and therefore be responsible for the characteristics of the image projected.

Is this in visual form for you?

Jonathan: Yes, it is. I realize now that in that lesson we were squeezing noodle dough through apertures. Now I see that the actual projection isn't ego, but ego has a definite influence upon that.

Thank you.

Elyon: Precisely. Ego will condition the entire response and be responsible in a sense for the response itself, in allowing the response, in making possible the response, as a lens on a projector. But the response itself is not the lens but rather the image flowing through the lens. The lens then takes the image and focuses it, conditions it and portrays it on to a surface to be experienced. So, while the two work together, the role of the ego can be seen as the lens through which the desire has been focused.

Jonathan: It ultimately goes back to the personality is the projector; the ego could be wide angle, tunnel vision, panoramic in how it alters the image as it proceeds through the lens. We don't have multiple egos. How each image hits the screen isn't a manifestation of differing egos but rather a single aperture, and various results all directed by the one personality.

Elyon: True. If you were to see the personality as the projector and the ego as the lens, you would also then realize that the ego has great power to distort or to enhance the image by virtue of its relativity and coordination with the original image. Therefore it may seem from the outside that the ego may be entirely in control at times, but the image being projected remains the same.

Jonathan: If we try to be egoless and didn't have a lens, we may not be able to focus anything.

Elyon: Precisely why in the lesson you heard that the two are linked together and necessary one to the other. A projector without a lens will not provide an image, and a lens without a projector likewise. It is your job in this life to coordinate the exact functioning and positioning of the lens so as to maximize the portrayal of the image being projected through this lens.

Jonathan: I like this imagery because, as The Urantia Book says, personality is a unifier of all our selfhood. With the idea of a projector, you have film; you have a light bulb -- the divine spark or God. The film could be truth or your soul experience. All those things are unified as the projector.

Elyon: My friend, you have stumbled on another very good metaphor in that, if you think of the Father's light as the light bulb in that projector and your personality as the . .. and your ego in charge of what to put in the . .. (tape flipped) then you would come close to an accurate picture of how things fall in line together.

Jonathan: I cringe to bring up the tripod and the triangular relationship.

Elyon: Indeed, we could go on.

Tom: Where does will come in? If personality is like the film that is showing each frame, if the personality makes the choice, are these choices prearranged so they pop up as we decide to go out now that our hour has come?

Elyon: My friend, remove from your mind the concept of prearranged destiny in relationship to your freewill choice. Going back to the metaphor of the projector, it is up to you, your personality, to look through a series of images, a series of slides that you have at your disposal, and you choose which slide you would put in front of the Father's light. Your will, my friend, is the part which activates the entire projector which turns on the entire switch. The Father's light is always ready, always in readiness to be activated. Your will chooses to activate the projector by turning on the switch. Your personality chooses which image to display, and your ego attempts to focus that image.

Jonathan: You are using the word "slide" which, like in a carousel type of projector, they can be arranged in any order. Maybe our life experience put through the projector results in our soul transcript, a film sequence that becomes our life experience.

Elyon: Precisely. I have referred to this as your library, but transcript is fine. Either way, these are the sum total of your experiences and your desires from which you have freely to draw at any time. There are no predestined choices that have been made for you. All choices you make are your choices. You choose based upon the resources you have in front of you, your life-experience library.

Tom: You say the personality chooses. I guess that is me, isn't it?

Elyon: Yes. It is an aspect of you.

Closing

Jonathan: Thank you very much. I rarely get a chance to talk with you as I am often TRing.

Elyon: I enjoyed it, myself. I would add one final addition to this metaphor, that we should all go out and take more pictures to be made into images to be stored in our library to be put in front of the Father's light to be projected with clarity and precision out to those around us.

Thank you, my friends.