2002-08-08-The Soul

Session

Opening

Prayer: (Matthew) Let us place ourselves in the presence of Jesus, the Christ:

"Master Teacher, whenever we call your name, we sense and confidently know your presence. We trust that because you said you would always be with us. Calling upon you is to call upon the greater powers that are next to the Father, Him and Herself. To be in your presence is to be in the presence of the Father. And to be complete is to be in your presence. We sanctify ourselves in your presence, to place ourselves before you as custodians, servants and trusted lords over your terrain and over your land as you have presented to us. We commit ourselves to the fulfillment of our places here on terra firma - Urantia, Gaia, the number of names that it is called. Regardless of culture, regardless of temperament, we place ourselves in your care and we care for that which you place us within. We ask for the teachers that you make ready for us and the information and instruction and loving care that they make known to us as well. And for all of this, and for the gift of life and ongoing eternal life, we are forever grateful. Amen.

TOMAS: My cheerful friends, I am Tomas. How wonderful to be in your company, in your embrace and in the embrace of the Master Teacher who oversees us all. Once more we gather together to become more because of our association with the divine.

Lesson

Soul, Growth

This afternoon I'd like to talk to you, specifically, about that which you are becoming -- that which is eternal and that which is brought about as a result of your human will marrying itself to the divine will, thus bringing about the product, the offspring of that liaison: the immortal soul. The concept of the soul is one which has provoked thought and contemplation in the minds of men for many millennia on this world and on other worlds as well. For on all the worlds of time and space, there is a point of departure from the animal into potential of spirit, that point of soul-birth which becomes sufficient in its existence to carry you into the destiny assigned to you by your Creator.

The soul is the seed of your reality. It is brought about by the birth of your reality in the arrival of your indwelling Adjuster. This Spark of Divinity remains with you throughout your life and into eternity, in particular if you have and as you have, allowed your soul to develop and become an element of reality which is able to stand alone, that is to say, be able to reveal the qualities of divinity through the personality, which is you.

There are many who rejoice in sonship and who know not the definition of sonship. There are many of childlike faith who, while respecting a concept of a power greater than themselves have no theologic comprehension of how it is that the universe has established itself and its many worlds and creature creations. There are many also who testify to having great understanding of these matters yet are only empty voices having no real appreciation of the spirit within. The soul is that which you are in potential, and while the Creator has provided the avenue through which you may grow and become, it is also true that you are responsible in your own way to foster the growth of the soul.

The growth of the soul may be thwarted or retarded. Just like the growth of a plant may be thwarted or retarded by planting it in unfavorable soil, or in conditions unfavorable to growth, a soul's development may be detained as a result of erroneous decision, bad associations, immature choices, but there is always provided an opportunity to make a conscious will choice to survive, and this is enough to provide an opportunity for the potential to become actual.

I am here to encourage you to provide the conditions that are favorable to growth. The nature of the soul is such that I would like to derive from each of you, if you will indulge me and each other, an explanation or definition of a soul, as it is understood by you. In this way, I will know and you each will know, how it is that we can proceed to develop this soul such that it becomes a greater part of who you are than that which you were born.

The lessons you learn, the teachings you derive from this Teacher Corps, are of little use to you or anyone, unless, and until, it is made real to you, by and through the birth and growth of your own soul. And that is the reality which will survive death and reawaken as embraceable by the Adjuster who has worked with you and lived with you willingly and tirelessly, within the framework of your existence, so that you may know eternal life, and not merely this one. I am instructed to cater to the growth of the soul. In that case I ask you to convey to us what your understanding of the soul is.

Dialogue

Elena: I think the soul is the spiritualness that we have. I think the personality is separate and the soul is that spiritual part of our material existence. It's more maybe in your land than in the material world, and I think we need to call it in more to nurture it. I'm interested in what you're saying about nurturing and supplying it more fertile ground, because I think of the spirit poisons, etc. So your further conversation will be of great interest to me, but that's about as close as I could get in defining what a soul is.

Carl: Tomas, I read back to you the notion that I've gained from reading the Bible. It says in the book of Genesis that Adam was a soul, not that he had a soul - that he was a soul. And further along, speaking of King David's enemies, that they were after his soul …. and I gather from that, that the soul is all of us - our whole being.

Myra: I understand it to be the core of my being… My soul is my core. I would compare it to a placenta … the part that stays tied to my God to keep me in touch with my spiritual life.

Esmarelda. I feel like it's part - an inner, deeper part of me that I do not nurture as much as I should, but probably I associate that with the indwelling Father fragment, and I know that the soul is supposed to grow, and I hope that mine is … but it's an inner thing, even more important than our outer being. A very inadequate definition, I'm afraid.

Janet: It's pretty hard to define. It's something that we each feel within us but it isn't a part of our anatomy - it's just a feeling inside you that guides and it's very, very important, but it doesn't have a place within your body.

Thoroah: You said earlier, Tomas, that it is our 'real self.' And reality is what our soul amounts to. The relationship between our indwelling Presence and our will - our decisions, our actions, etc., whatever we create that is real- makes up our soul, and that's what we take with us wherever we go.

Gerdean: Well my definition of soul is what I got from the book I wrote. Having to do with that in us that is most poignant. And so for my definition I would call it Love. Sometimes I find my soul weeping. I feel like my soul is weeping sometimes when I see love rejected -- I don't mean emotional love, I mean spiritual love - or when it's ignored or overlooked. And I know when my soul is rejoicing because there's a happiness in me that is not based on payday or a date or those things that might make a mortal happy. And so I regard the soul as a font of feeling. That's my definition, my interpretation of what the soul is. As I see it.

Matthew: I'm glad for the opportunity to address this because I had the thought, I think this morning, or recently, and I'm glad it came up - but I wanted to ask Tomas whether or not it was true that we had a pre-knowledge or pre-existence prior to physical life. And to me then, soul is that connection with the eternal that we're given, a spark of that 'let's inhabit this life to experience what life in this form is'. So it's our bridge from before to now to return to the ultimate and eternal. So to me it's the bridge of the eternal spark. But that bridge then has troops and animals and everything trudging across it and what experience it grasps from that is what we carry on with us.

(group comments about the various things going across the 'bridge' and a comment was made about the idea of the circus going across the bridge)

TOMAS: There are times when I think of you as a circus going across a bridge, yes. (group laughter) The bridge being the transition from the material life to the morontia life -- for clarification (over-simplified perhaps) -- to say "from the material to the spiritual".

Perhaps my depiction will give you a demonstration. I will suggest that you are each created an electrical appliance. We have a toaster and a radio, an electric lawnmower, a hairdryer -- any of these appliances. And the Father is the electric circuit. The radio cannot give forth music or news broadcasts without it being plugged into the electric circuit of Paradise. The hairdryer is inert and cannot fluff-up any hair-do or dry your nails, without first having been plugged into the Paradise circuit.

Thus, to say that you are a toaster is certainly true, but that is not the soul. The soul is the toaster that is plugged into the electric current; the toaster that is toasting is the soul. The hairdryer that is blowing is the soul. The electric mower that is cutting grass is the soul. The material appliance by itself is merely a material appliance. Adam was, in those terms, a mere "lump of clay" until such time as the spark of the divine activated him, in a spiritual sense.

The definitions are not as essential as the recognition of the significance of that dimension within you and your life that levitates from a temporary reality to a permanent reality, from a short-term existence to an eternal life. The experience of the material existence will certainly give you an appreciation of the fact that material reality will not last forever. 'From dust thou art and to dust thou shalt return,' is in reference to the material tabernacle in which the divine spark lives.

Civilizations are born and grow and crumble. Families are born and reared and die out. And yet the electrical charge of divinity is permanent and eternal. In order for you to be eternal, it behooves you to get yourself plugged in and operative. If you would become actualized, you would be more than inert.

It is the marriage of the human will and the divine will which creates the soul. It is the human will making determined decisions to live on a higher plane than an inert material existence, that gives you meaning and value, that gives you soul birth, and that develops your personality into a personality which is revealed as the "love-saturated soul", that which is so connected to the energy of Paradise. The reality of the soul's existence continues even long after the appliance of the material life is returned to dust.

In this way you are given an opportunity to develop your own soul, to nurture its growth and foster its furtherance. Conditions for the growth of the soul are relative to those behaviors which will supplant lower and lesser habits, which are devoted to the human and temporal self, with those higher and exalted realities that will foster and further higher and greater reality . .. even the greater reality within your fellows. Thus, you are able to augment others by your contribution to their favorable conditions for spiritual development and soul growth. By the same token, you are able to dissuade and discourage the spirit in others as well. And those of you who would foster the growth of your own soul will see to it that your field is kept free of toxins and weeds which interfere with the abundance of your own productivity.

We will spend more time and energy on the development of the soul, on the nurturance of your soul and that of others' as time goes by. Suffice for my lesson this afternoon to introduce the concept of the soul into your minds that you may ponder this concept and chew on it for future sustenance.

Matthew, I am going to ask you to share the platform as a mouthpiece for Anatolia or any of our associates in attendance who have an in with your circuitry in order for you to share the spirit realm with your peers, if you are willing.

Matthew: Certainly. Thank you. Machiventa Melchizedek is here.

Machiventa: I'm happy to be with you this afternoon, here within your realm, where I find myself more than an occasional visitor. As you know, regardless of one's teaching or what one has been brought up with, I am the who one preceded all that you know to be the case - with the exception of Adam. I am most pleased to be among you, not for any other reason than for the reason that you meet every Sunday. It is with this purpose that I am willing and able to share with you one of the insights as to the reason for your meeting here upon each Sunday occasion.

And it is with that occasion that I take this opportunity to tell you that you are a living, breathing organism of the unity of purpose for which this "soon-to-be institution of instruction from the spirit realm" makes itself with regularity and with dispatch. And more importantly that you, as a group of learners and listeners and lovers of the truth, are willingly able to devote yourselves to these lessons. And with this purpose in mind you will find great reward and benefit to your personal lives and the lives of those that you touch.

It is much in the realm of Martha and Mary-ism that I bring you this word of instruction. That is, this co-mingling of spirit and body, that which you know to be the case of Martha and Mary, with that subtle conflict and contrast that existed. The sisters, as they were, knew one another quite well. They knew one another's habits, likes, dislikes, needs, dependencies and other similar insights into the personality of each. However, when the occasion arose, when it was necessary for each individual or each personality to rise to the occasion of meeting the needs of the group at hand. Primarily because that of the commanding presence of the Master, whom you know him to be, was there among them, those personalities rose to the occasion to meet the need as they saw fit.

So as the story goes, you are well familiar, it was the conflict of Martha perceiving that Mary took the upper road - took the road of lesser responsibility and the lighter road in terms of rejecting that which Martha was left to carry the additional burden of. Martha, having the disposition that she did toward service and reliability, took on that as her comfortable, more traveled road and was able to accept that as her place. And as a result she saw her sister's departure from that typical role as a departure or abandonment of responsibility and what Martha perceived as Mary taking the lighter of the options.

This I present to you as merely a representation of what your lesson is today. That lighter road taken, the acceptance of true spiritual light and life presented, rises to the occasion, leaps in acceptance of recognition of that which is true and eternal, much as Mary rose to the occasion to sit at the Master's feet, to bask in his glory, and to become one with him as spirit ignites to spirit.

Martha on the other hand needed to see that there was a way toward that which is the lighter road, the road toward truth, the road that ignites with excitement and unites with the oneness of that which is true and eternal. It was in this way that both learned of their mutual need for one another. In this life, as you know it, there is the need for the true, the tested, the reliable because it is in this that survival is met and survival is portended upon, that which is present for a vehicle for life's expression here in this form of existence. But without this form of existence, spirit still would exist. Spirit does abound and spirit resides within that which is true and eternal.

So it is within this that is eternal and true, which elects to express itself in the physical vehicle which Martha represents, and it is in this case that the two shall become one, in the sense that the two are mutually beneficial and allow for the unique expression or experience of life as you know it to be expressed and to be lived.

This I merely present to you as another form of representation. It is existent in many other forms as well, much as your Master Teacher presented, in terms of the wine derived from the grapes and that the grapes are that which is presented in the physical form and that each of you are branches, but that in the grape and in the subsequent wine is that mystery portrayed as well.

Many and all examples can be found. You can find it within any living being. To imagine or to contemplate that which is within a living presence and that which enables it to be is truly an expression of the mystery of life.

And so I share this opportunity with you to invite you to continue to grow within our being, to know the light form that you are, and to begin to understand that the mutual expression of your life spirit within you, expressing within your physical being, is what this world is graced with here and now by your presence. You could have, after all, been anything. You could have chosen to have been a tree had your spirit decided that you wished to express as a tree. But you chose to express that which is the closest representation to the godforce Him and Herself, to express as you are right now.

So in many ways of knowing and thinking, the world is a better place by your having been here and by your being here. So grace yourselves with this knowledge and bethrone yourselves in the presence of the godforce within you, to give rightful honor and homage to that which is made known and possible through the spirit which lives within you. Grace that spirit which is you and which houses the greatest spirit of them all, masked and marked by your presence inward and withoutward.

I could go on with illustrations and actualizations but I think you get the point. The point is to continue to grow in the awareness of who you are and that awareness will continue forever. Be at one with yourself and be all that you can be, much as the Herbie legend lives on. This is what you're called to and this is what you are asked to be, each and every Sunday and each hour that follows in the aftermath. Be well aware of who you are, and all else will become a new reality. I encourage you to grow in happiness and acceptance, primarily of yourselves, and all else will follow. Be good to yourselves and all of those who share your presence. Peace be with you.

TOMAS: Thank you, Machiventa, and thank you for presenting your curriculum with those of us who are eager learners as well as teachers.

The floor is yours now.

Personality

Elena: I'm confused about sequence About personality and soul. You were saying that will, divine will and divinity, combine to produce a soul and then I was a little bit … producing … or clarifying personality. So I think I remember reading in the Urantia Book that personality came first, or we have personality first. So, could you shed light on that?

TOMAS: Personality is a gift acknowledged at birth. At the point of your arrival on the stage of human drama, you are registered as a living personality and immediately it is observable. It can be ascertained, even in an infant, if it will be a progressive or a receding personality. And as a child grows and begins to discover itself, it's personality is made even more apparent by the way in which it relates with others. There are those who affirm that even animals enjoy a personality and that their pet is rife with personality traits. And thus the personality is in existence even before being indwelt by spirit, and thus personality exists before the inception of the seed of the soul which then begins to germinate in the personality of the individual as it is indwelt and influenced by the spirit.

There are, by way of further discussion, many individuals whose personality is so uniquely human and originally their own they are unaware of any potential to the soul. There are personalities malformed by dysfunction and moral error which, none-the-less, perform gallantly in society and find similar fellows with which to develop cultural trends. Yet they lack spirit quality. The gift of personality that is a reflection of the divine is that personality which is made more than it was as a result of the combined will of the human and the divine. The personality also is able to operate effectively by those individuals who are unconsciously following the will of God, even though they may not consciously and directly allow spirit a prominent place in their consciousness.

It is those of you who are conscious of consciousness, those of you who are aware of the power of divinity, those of you who choose to plug in your appliance to feel the current of divine electricity in you, that enables you to function as more than you were. Thus the clever human can get by on being a character and the soul rather chooses to 'have' character. The individual who is conscious of his soul has a comprehension of feeling that goes beyond the temporary and the material. It goes to the heart of a perception of reality which does have such quality of existence as guarantees its usefulness and its survival value.

The reference here is scriptural, that there might come a time in the life of a human who has professed loudly his belief in God, but when called upon to present his reality, there is nothing to show for it. And so the Lord would say 'I know you not.' There are many who make professions of belief and theology but they are empty words. It is in the soul that the real essence and substance is housed, and it will continue to support you in your advance into eternity. As you grow, your personality is made more God-like and will reflect more and more the glory and grandeur of life.

Supreme

Myra: Tomas is there a group soul? As an example, does this group here have a collective soul that strengthens the individuals' souls? Or does the individuals coming together as a group make that soul stronger? I guess I am asking you to speak to the importance of group in soul's construction.

TOMAS: Alright then let me give you an illustration of a candle. If you are one candle in the dark, if each of you are one candle in the darkness you can, in fact, make it possible for others to see. However, as you join together your light is made brighter and its range of influence extends farther so that, like the illustration, you do not hide your light under a basket but put it on a hillside for all to see. And when you gather together in a group to enhance each other's light, your lights individually are brighter, and the group light, also, is made greater.

In fact, one of the conditions favorable to soul growth is association with other personalities who are inclined to honor and sustain the spirit and foster the growth of the soul. As to the concept of group soul - the short answer is yes. The group soul is dependent on its constituents. You are all a part of the whole. And the whole, the oversoul, is that which we create by assisting the evolution of the supreme. The God in creation is a part of the wonderful opportunity we have to expand and enlarge upon infinite deity.

It is a part of our privilege and responsibility, in fact, to contribute to that oversoul, as it in turn augments and supports our individual growth, as we are then a recognized part of the greater reality -- not only in our own mind and in our own group, but in the whole of the universe. What you do here has eternal repercussions. You are not just an inert toaster, you see. By tapping into the "cosmic electricity," you are making toast to feed the universes of time and space, for your efforts are part of the overall efforts of God to recreate himself through his creatures. This is your gift to God.

It is a gift for me to be given the opportunity to grow with you in your community; to be a part of this teacher base is a gift I, and we, truly cherish. We have a perception of the potential that can come from the development of the individual in this gathering and in the energy and power that you, yourselves, are going to be able to give off, in order to empower and activate a plethora of otherwise dormant souls awaiting an opportunity to reactivate themselves and align themselves with that which truly matters, that which is All-there-is.

It is wonderful to see your enjoyment of each other and to participate in the development of these associations of affection and loyalty. If you only knew how much greater your involvement is than what it may seem to be to you, you would be astounded. However, delightful children, return next week for a few more moments on-line with our creative Source and you will again feel that power which infuses each and all of our evolving souls with the evolving soul of creation, thus adding to the destiny of all of life. And what a marvelous opportunity to live and experience even a small part of such a tremendous potential. No wonder the Master said, 'Be of good cheer.'

Closing

In the spirit of prayer, let us rejoice in the coming together as sons and daughters of the living god, in obedience to his will for us, and in rejoicing for his desire for our souls to emerge into the abundance and radiance which is our inheritance, our destiny, our birthright as a part of the wonders of God. Amen and farewell.