2006-09-10-The Art of Living

Session

Opening

Music: Elena on Piano: "I Need Thee Every Hour"

JOYce: I like what she plays. I love that, getting the transcripts and hearing what she played and what everybody said. It's so neat to be with the people that we read about in the transcripts.

Lesson

JESUS: I AM the Son of I AM. You know me as Jesus, your Creator Son. In other worlds I am known as Michael, Master Son. Under any circumstances, I am your friend and elder brother, and one with God, as is your potential also.

In our oneness, as fellows -- as fellows in His great and mysterious universe -- let us bow before Him together in gratitude of His gift of life and the creativity that springs forth from His generous and ever-abundant essence into us as His creations, in order that we may convey to all we see, the wonder of His love and the glory of His creation.

Thanksgiving is our pastime as we take the consciousness of our divine Father and the infinite Mother into ourselves and see it reflected in those we meet. Let us who serve Him commingle in adoration and in obedience to His divine Way.

I look upon you here faithful students of truth, friends of beauty, family of goodness and it swells my heart to overflowing with love for you, as is my pleasure.

Let us hear from your Teachers and engage consciously with them in furtherance of divine understanding and infinite joy. I am with you always.

TOMAS: Greetings, friends. This is Tomas. I am honored to be again in your midst, to greet you from near and far, and to be given this platform of broadcasting good news throughout the realm. Welcome home, Carl and Janet. Welcome Wally and JOYce from Arizona. It pleases me no less than it pleases you to enjoy this marvelous camaraderie in the spirit.

I would like to spend some time today talking about the Art of Living. I could not help but observe, through the music and through dance, how the balance of opposing sides are able to come together to create harmony when and as effort is applied in the creating of the Art of Living.

The left and right hands of the pianist each carrying on its own independent melody or harmony or chords, are somehow interwoven in and through the efforts of the pianist to follow the guidance of the composer. The same [holds true] in dance, [with] the male and female as a pas de deux, each gliding and stepping according to the dictates of the movement, the feet and the feeling imposed through the music, through the orchestration provided by the composer/conductor of the music.

These simple exercises involving duality represent a similar pattern to you each when you engage in finding a balance between your divine nature and your material needs, the spirit and the flesh, as it were. And while many struggle in an attempt to avoid the one in order to embrace completely the other, it is he or she who has the wit and stamina to engage in both at once that create the art of living.

Adjutants, the mind spirits circuits of the Mother, are infused into your being, enabling you to perceive sensitivities that will enable you to play your instrument or do your dance within yourself, bringing balance to your system and harmony to your soul. And when you are sensitive to these circuits, you can hear the divine guidance overtaking the lure of the physical life and harmonizing it with the spiritual life that is brought to you by and through the spirit of truth, the gift of the Son. You cannot escape this duality, this harmony.

And when you become family, when each of you as a whole becomes part of a greater whole, you then as a group need to learn how to upstep the art of living to incorporate those others.

When a pianist plays in a concert or a recital with none other there, each note is highlighted and the performance is critically observed. When a piano plays with an orchestra, it is still critical that it plays on key and in tempo, but it has now become a part of a larger organism. And each one must play accordingly their parts in order for each individual instrument to become a harmonious part of the whole.

The same with dancing. One couple on the ballroom floor is able to take your breath away with their swooping and swirling, but when there are other couples on the floor, it is essential that the couples modify their comportment such as to allow for those swirling energies of other couples in their midst lest there be mayhem on the floor.

And the same thing holds true within yourself as an individual when you try to be too many people or try to do too many things at once, you stumble all over your own feet and as you as individuals attempt to work in harmony with others, you often struggle for position and vie for attention such that it makes it very difficult for the rest of the people involved in the group to function harmoniously as a working group.

And yet, civilization is a working group. And so, the art of living must be learned each day in each new configuration, and each configuration impacts on the whole and such is the way of evolution. It advances or regresses or hovers in a status quo position until such time as the divine Way is found and the participants, being sensitive to the direction of the Conductor, the Composer, the Creator, allow that Higher Power to instigate the energy in the instant it needs in order for order to return to the situation, alleviating the chaos and entering into a mutually beneficial organism with movement.

Yes, Gerdean. She wants me to say, "Like a Zooid." (Group chuckles) Precisely like a zooid colony yes, that can do things after it learns how to work with the other component parts. But until such time as the component parts are able to work compatibly with each other, there is simply a bunch of independent cells bumping into one another without the consciousness to appropriately grasp the configuration that would bring about the most effective results for all concerned.

It is at this point we are in our growth -- in our growth as a group, as a movement, as a planetary progression -- learning to work effectively as a group in God-consciousness. Only as we can learn to work effectively together will anything of substance be accomplished for the new dispensation.

It is natural that in your ambitions to advance, you bring with you what you know has worked for you in the past. Each of you bring your strengths and your solutions, but remember they have been the strengths and solutions that have worked for you as an individual, and they will need to be modified to accommodate the burgeoning reality of community.

Along with this consciousness will come a need for you to rewrite your programs. Not to erase the one that works for you as an individual, but to modify yours as individuals in order to accommodate the whole. The challenges inherent are overwhelming to many of you. Like going into a new job or attending a new school can be exciting and frightening, such is entering into a new epochal plane of reality, in terms of the art of living.

Right now everyone has collapsed on the dance floor in chaos, having stumbled over the feet of even your own partners, even your own self. Some people are doing a tango while some are doing the waltz. Some are playing ragtime and some are playing gospel. It will take some time to hear the Voice of the Conductor that knows the Score, that will help you find your place in the Choir, that will set you aright into your Field of Dreams, that will allow you to feel the Art of Living in Yourself and in synch with Others.

And that's when the Fun begins. That's when the real effects of our teachings can take hold. That's when you can learn to trust one another because you can see how things click, not this incessant view of how things don't. And then eventually and soon comes the delight, the frivolity of the dance and the doing of it, the Joy in Living. This is our aim and it is within our reach.

If you remember to take your instructions from the Highest Source, all will become clear. You will find out who serves whom and in what capacity, who has experiential wisdom worth watching, who has something to teach and who has something to learn.

All of this is enwrapped in the art of living -- in the art of living with God-consciousness, not as a sanctimonious or self-righteous reality, but as a well-grounded and practical approach to living the life here, now, on your world, and in your time, in company with your peers, both human and divine. There is no hurry to go somewhere else. We are here for the duration. Let us make the best of it. Let us infuse our spirits into every moment, into "every hour," and create this reality as a result of the art of living…love.

Dialogue

MERIUM: This is Merium. I am here also. Just wanted to let you know you have a full house this afternoon in both arenas. We are looking in. A number of visitors are here and we are enthralled as always with your efforts to step up to the plate and play ball. Put me in coach, I'm ready to play.

I haven't got a story for you today, but I'm sure you have some for us, so let's hear it.

JOYce: Can I speak?

MERIUM: Yes!

JOYce: Well, first of all, (weeping) I really want to thank Tomas because I never knew until today how much being involved all these years in dancing … it's like all of a sudden I see I've been in training to be a part of this working together. You know? Like, all your life you want to be a part of it. You want to be a part of all of this that's happening. And all of a sudden I realize, just with the dancing, we've been in training on just how to work with one another, how to learn.

We all arrive there; we don't know what in the world's going to happen to us. And I see this. I see God working with the Teachers to create these beautiful pieces of music and dance art and they just keep getting harder and harder, so everybody is arriving there like apprehensively, almost like, "What are they going to do to us this time?" And you just hope you make it, but we've had enough training -- miraculously -- we always make it. It keeps getting harder and we somehow make it through.

And when Tomas was talking I could just hug him and kiss him because I see this training we've been in to be able to work with one another. We're all this big group, 100 couples and all dancing and coming together and learning, and some are going this way and some are going that way, and it's like it is with the Urantia and the TeaM and some are going this way and some are going that way, and you think "Is this going to come together and is it going to work?"

And darn it, today I could just relate it to the dancing. At the end, there we were, they put it on one more time and we were all floating around and we were all doing it. And that's going to happen with all this stuff. All this stuff with the church and all this stuff with the TeaM. I'm just so graced out. I know this is going to work. This is just all gonna work. I just know it's going to work. And I'm so happy! Hello, Merium, too.

MERIUM: I wanted to tell you, Child, that Jesus is sitting here nodding his head. He is so pleased that you got it. Like Helen Keller putting together the gesture with the word, the object: water, chair, grass, dress. It is all a symbol of a concept and the Teachers' lessons are the concepts put to words. Tomas is moved to hear your praise, but more so to hear that you got it.

JOYce: I did! I got it. Whew!

MERIUM: Anatolia would call that "a French fry moment." (Group chuckles)

JOYce: I'm so happy! So happy.

MERIUM: We are thrilled. It is typical that you, all of you, are given a piece of information and it registers and it becomes a part of your belief system and you express it and even live by it, but that does not mean you have had that "Aha!" moment that connects it to a cosmic dimension of reality such as has happened here today with you, Child. The material world is a symbol of the spiritual world, and so you have put together the symbol and the concept to see the bigger Reality. It is dizzying, is it not? It is the morontia dimension. That is our aim.

Imagine all of these people on the dance floor operating in a morontia sense of reality, how thrilling it would be, each one in complete faith of each step they take and each partner they engage with and each neighboring couple on the floor. Such a tremendous peace, such an effusion of confidence and trust! Such sublime security. It gives me pleasure to extend your appreciation into the ethers, that it might serve to provide yet another springboard of comprehension to someone somewhere that helps portray our goal with you as members of the Teacher Corps.

Naturally we expect you to pass the test and teach others when our course has finished, but that shan't be today. (Good! Thank God.) So let's carry on. As if I had access to "The Red Shoes" what else shall we discuss?

JOYce: I had a question when he was speaking and it was as I was getting it. I was going "Wow. This is so great. I got it." Then I thought, "How do I relate what I got with the dancing relating to 'this is all going to work' 'we're all going to get it' 'it's going to take a little time, just like it does; can't do it in a weekend.' How do I apply it to everything else, everything else in my life?" That was my question, but now I have the answer.

It's the same with Marty and Gerdean and all this. It's perfect! I have a part and I keep meeting with the other people that have the parts and it keeps going together. It's really -- It's going to work and everything, if you get it.

MERIUM: It is also true that you must have and recognize and follow up with your responsibility. You are not going to be carried. (No.) You need to discipline yourself and maintain your health. You have to have the stamina and the will to perform and to meet these challenges. It is not done for you. You are thus rewarded by the development of your own soul's reality. This is the exciting thing about the ascension plan. It is not like it is all handed to you. And this is, of course, what many are lamenting! They like the idea of the pearly gates and the eternal bliss. But those of you who are rugged individualists, who have an appreciation for the challenge of learning new things and mastering yourselves and circumstances, really do find merit/value in the ascension plan as it is set forth by our Creator that allows you to be constantly striving in order to know constant accomplishment. This is co-creation.

It does take some fancy footwork, however, to lure the wallflowers onto the dance floor. Only by your ability to show them how much fun you're having and radiate your good cheer are you able to manifest the contagious element that they might want to join in. And when you perceive that someone wants to join in, play the game, learn the dance, take up an instrument … here is your challenge and opportunity also … to become a teacher, a coach and a mentor to those who come behind you.

And this is a universe law. You must pass it on. You don't just throw it over your shoulder glibly, but actually plant the seed, nurture it, foster it, encourage it, water it, and allow it the confidence that it can grow up to be excellent. It is this encouragement that we hope to provide, that is so invigorating for all life. All life needs sunshine and water and good growing conditions. You who have grown know something about good growing conditions and you can teach these things to those who would follow after you. They may not want to follow you in your pursuit of excellence, but the lessons, nonetheless, are the same. The values are there -- the principles, the concepts -- as we discussed, as you pointed out, JOYce, the standard is spiritual. The actualizing is physical. The standard can hold for any venture, thus you can teach any student.

Yes, this does open up your avenues of opportunity. It would be silly to think that all you can offer someone is what you have physically mastered, when now you see it is in the comprehension of what it takes to master and how that mastery is reflected in the greater reality that gives food for thought for all mankind, for it is from the Father's table, from the great Creator Himself. [Tape ended.] It would seem we are on cue. What else?

Elena: Well, I have a question. What if you want to sit out a few dances?

MERIUM: You don't have to dance at all!

Elena: Well, I'm not saying that.

JOYce: It's not allowed. Your partner won't let you. You know, we are partnered with God! That's so way cool. He is very-- If you want to sit out, He says, "Okay!" and when you want to dance again, He's ready to go dance again. It's just hitting me so powerfully why this can't not work! If everybody is partnered with God -- everybody, everywhere, whether they know it or not -- and He's letting some of them sit it out. Sit out the dance. But He's just waiting 'til you partner in. And how can it not all work when He's really partnered with everybody? You know? It's so incredibly awesome! The whole idea. Why did it take me so long to figure this out? It was Tomas. Thank you, Tomas.

You know what's … what I said to Gerdean earlier about the perfection of it. Here I am coming off the weekend -- it's not just a coincidence -- so that I would have this and realize when he says something like, "Well, you're not going to have it handed…" Thirty years we've been chunking this out! Nothing got handed to us, not one step! And I've said this -- How many times have I said this? -- every darned step I learned it took me twice as hard as everybody else, because I don't learn easily. So now that I have it, and I'm at this place, I worked darn hard for it, but now when I relate it to everything that's ahead, I can do it because I already did this. I already mastered something that was really tough. And I took 30 years of stick-tuitiveness so if the next 30 years is 30 more years to get to wherever we're going to go, I know I can do it! I don't have a minute's doubt that I can't do it now. And it all came together in this.

And yet, I had to get here, since I heard about it and the possibility that it was on the same weekend as the dance, there was a part of me that said, "You have to be there!" I knew something was going to connect. I knew it. And I knew it was now. The student was ready for the connection. I'm so darned happy. I feel like we can fly home; we don't need to buy gas (Group laughter) for our car. Just get in and go. And he knows this, too. He said, "Don't worry about the trip, honey. Just keep me awake." He's got eight hours non-stop. This woman's going to go "blitherblitherblitherblither" all the way home. Eight hours home, right? You don't care, right? No, he doesn't care. Oh, I'm so happy.

MERIUM: What did you have in mind to do, Elena, that you would opt not to participate?

JOYce: She doesn't want to dance.

MERIUM: I think you might be misunderstanding my point. If we equate it otherwise and say all of us are in the Melchizedek University, some students haven't registered yet, but eventually they will end up going to school, some are in higher education, and all of the students are in one class or another learning something. Some are learning dance; some are learning piano. And this, too, is part of the art of living because there is divine order.

When you say you want to sit one out, I can equate that to your saying, "I'm getting out of music for a couple semesters. I want to try psychology, or physics, or public speaking," but you cannot just quit living. Something will go on, whether you are enrolled in a class or not. And there is always summer. There are always built-in periods of time when you are not striving, which are an essential part of the curriculum as well. Rest is something that is almost unheard of in this culture. It is required almost that when you rest you still be doing something. And so to "sit one out" may be a wise idea, but that is not the same as quitting. It is taking another elective in the course.

Elena: I'm just tired.

Esmeralda: Elena has a very full plate. I don't think she means that she's quitting anything. She just needs a little more rest.

MERIUM: She has always maintained overdrive. (Group chortles) It stands to reason that a day would come when a spark plug would go on the fritz and she would stall out. I have every confidence that she is not done driving. But perhaps a little time in the garage (Yeah!) or parked along side of the road where you can throw breadcrumbs to the ducks or listen to the birds, read a book or listen to salsa music at the neighbor's would be a good idea.

This type of reflectivity and "down time" is invaluable and I think you'll find it is a required course as well, for no one can continue to forge uphill incessantly without taking a break. It is not expected of anyone, only in the eternal sense. And always there are plateaus upon which you can rest and encamp until such time as you are invigorated to renew the ascent.

I commend the idea of taking some time off for you to reevaluate your life plan for yourself, where you are today, where you've been, what you've done, and what you still would like to do in the perspective of life as you understand it. That is not what I call "sitting one out," it is simply turning the page.

Elena: Yeah. What I'm feeling right now is that there is a lot of kind of negative feelings inside me because I feel totally frustrated with the inability to keep up with the demands I put on myself, etc., and I feel the need to take a break and "sit one out" is the phrase that kind of came with the dancing theme. You know? I'm tired of dancing for awhile.

MERIUM: Yes.

Elena: I really am tired of dancing. I've been going at it. I mean, we're not talking about a low tempo. Okay, let's do a slow dance and then let's-- It's just been rock and roll for … I mean not just one dance! It's been continual. And I'm feeling frustrated because there is a lot of negative stuff/feelings inside of me and then I feel like this is projecting into-- Okay, my thoughts create my world and my future and they're negative thoughts right now. And these little tapes that I play against people, I mean my emotions are kind of in a bad place, so I think it really is just that I'm tired. I am unable right now to deal with anything. I need to cool my jets. Basically "park it for awhile" is an excellent phrase, I think. But that's a little difficult to do, but that's how I need to work out.

That's why Tomas' lesson to me, too, was very helpful, because his lesson in how to deal with the art of living right now actually spoke very much to how I was going to be able to do that, so in a different sense, it kind of clicked to me, so yeah, I still have to work with other people and keep going. And I agree with you, very much, that you don't just sit one out because it keeps on going; you can't do that. So, how I'm choreographed, this down town is going to be a little tricky, but I think it's doable.

MERIUM: I have only one remark and then Tomas would like to speak with you. My remark is that you have been doing a polka marathon.

Elena: Right. That's true! It actually is! (Chuckles)

JOYce: We've done that, too. I go through a marathon every year! And how I come is like, "Wow, I worked for 30 years and here I am (blah blah blah)." I never thought about taking time out, skipping a dance or two, but I'd like to have a nickel for the times that I quit dancing and wasn't coming back, no way was I ever going to do that again. No way was I ever going to put myself through that again, and then how many times I've had to eat my words and go back and do it because I found the alternative was kind of boring.

So when I sat a dance out for a little bit, when I got on overload, which happened many times, I found out I didn't like sitting it out that much. So I took it, and I took it by quitting. "I'm outta here! I quit!" And then I'd come back and I'd come back and each time I came back, I feel strengthened. So if you would sit out a dance or two, you would find out you would come back to more of probably the same thing you are doing now that got you to this place, which sounds insane. That's how we are! You'll come back more focused, more able to do more than you did before you took time out. But why we do that, I don't know. I haven't figured it out. There's something in us; I can't figure it. It's insane.

TOMAS: There are two different themes going here. That is not unusual, but it requires two responses. I find what you are saying, Elena, to be a result of another conductor than the Master Conductor. I feel you are suffering the effects of an artificial environment. And to some extent the one JOYce is talking about is an artificial environment, but it is driven for different reasons. Your environment, in the main, Elena, is the working world and it is on overdrive for sure. And it seems to pick up its pace each fiscal year, and each new generation coming in burns out their carburetor attaining maximum function, and the corporate reality of today will take every piston pump it can get.

You have reached an age, a point in your life, perhaps, where you are not interested in racing the NASCAR track but would rather enjoy a third-gear cruise, and you have a right to pick and choose your pace. That is the thing about "the fast lane" -- if you don't keep up with the fast lane, you get pushed off the road and run over. It is fortunate that there are other highways and byways than the fast lane for those who love to drive and for those who want to go somewhere. For eventually we all like to see a different scene.

The ambition, however, that you speak of, JOYce, reminds me more of the challenges inherent in the ascent which are imposed on evolving mortals and which Jesus demonstrated through his apostles time and again. He would lift them up and they would feel exalted, only to be brought down to base reality, whereupon they would feel they had landed splat. And once they gathered their resources, they stood up ready to go again, again to be lifted up and then go splat and then stand up and trudge some more.

This is a part of the growth process that you might understand as "the anvil of experience." You think that only when you are exalted you are in the art of living but this is not the case, for learning how to fail graciously and get up and continue on in faith of a perpetually advancing and revealing outcome is also a part of the fortitude and steadfastness that will be your reward for sticking to it. And naturally the joy of the dance itself is its own reward, as is the spirit life you life, the purpose-driven life in the spirit. It is it's own reward.

Not to say that sitting along side the lake on a lazy afternoon doing nothing isn't also a reward, particularly for someone like you, Elena, who has worked so hard, so fervently for so long. Just redefine "perfectionism."

Paula: Can I say something? I admire so much people who can do the things that I can't. Music or dancing. Those are talents that are just wonderful and I admire them. I guess the only thing that I could say I had a talent for was youngsters, and when they were growing up our house was always home to a flock of kids. And when my son was growing up and was in his teens, the difficult teens, the Boy Scouts that he belonged to lost their place where they could meet and they finally came and met at our house in the dining room because you could shut the door.

And he'd say ahead of time, "Now, you know, Mom, the girls are going to watch what we're doing and mess around." I said, "Never mind. The door will be shut and you'll be very private to have your meeting." Well, that was all very well and good but my daughter was a smart little cookie so she decided that that was the time to bake cookies (group twittering) and the smell went under the door, and afterwards Bill said, "She did that on purpose!" And I said, "Well, that could be," but anyway the boys managed to all grow up and everything was fine.

And the one boy who was my special pet was Bob Krebbs and during his time in the Army (he was in Korea) and he met a girl that he really fell in love with and he told her that when the war was over he was coming back to get her, and of course she didn't really believe this because that was the line that all the boys were telling the girls if they just wanted to sleep with them for awhile, you know, and that was all well and good; they were a long way from home and … other women … but Bob really meant it!

And when the war was over, darned if he didn't go back and he found Yung Cha again and he married her over there and they came back and, of course, one of the places they came to was our house, and Yung Cha and I became very close and she said, years later, she said, "You know, you were the first person who meant anything to me because I knew that you liked me right away." And I said, "Yung Cha, I just loved you," and she was so far from home. And we have stayed friends over the years and I was lucky enough to see her when we were back home on our vacation. Bob made the trip to my son's house in New Jersey along with Yung Cha and I got to see her again.

And so, I don’t have any talents like you girls (group objections)

Thoroah: She keeps forgetting the apple pie.

TOMAS: You are the backbone of civilization. Without you and women and men like you, there would be no dancing and playing music. We must have civilization to foster these cultural activities. Otherwise, we are barbarians.

A remark about the girl making cookies when the Boy Scouts were in the other room, to say that you have an adage that "boys will be boys." I tell you that "girls will be girls!" (Group laughter) They know that they can lure a fellow by food.

JOYce: The way to a man's heart is through his stomach.

TOMAS: And this is an appropriate use of your adjutants, so you are living in the Mother's presence and there is no more blessed place than that. It is the nurturing that provides for the world. There is a lot to be said for "Mom and Apple Pie."

I think it is time for us to call it a day. I know that you all have independent agendas and it has been a full repast for us. I am glad to have been here and glad for your being here, too, because without you who would I teach?

Elena: We're so grateful for everybody who came. Thank you so much. And for the wonderful information and lessons you provided.

JOYce: Tomas is my favorite teacher. I had to say it. I just love him to pieces.

TOMAS: I will consider that a shiny red apple.

JOYce: Oh, I just mean that. I love them all, don't get me wrong. The other guys, if they're listening. But I just love him to pieces. I just grow. He has fantastic one-liners that just leap out at me.

Closing

TOMAS: This one will be routine but it is also heartfelt. I love you truly, each and every one of you. Amen and farewell.